Men's Mass

Join our wonderful community of men here at St. Bridget's for an inspiring Mass

Tuesday, March 3rd at 6:30pm

with Music by Kent Stevenson

Everyone is welcome! We encourage you to bring friends, neighbors, brother, your dad, your school-age son, or friends from other parishes.

Sometimes it’s difficult to carve out time away from our jobs, responsibilities, and family, but fraternal community is essential in our daily battles for prayer, support, and encouragement.

Parish Mission

March 9th - 11th Monday, Tuesday, and Wednedsay Evenings at 7:00pm

This three evening mission is a time to quiet your busy life and be renewed in your faith. It’s also a time for the parish to come together as a community and Rediscover the Treasures of Our Faith!” The mission presenter, Dr. Tom Curran, will be giving inspiring talks on our mission theme each evening of the mission.

Evening Topics Mon, Mar 9th The Mass: A Place to Encounter Jesus, Your Living Lord Tues, Mar 10th Confession: An Opportunity to Heal Your Life with Opportunities for Confession Wed, Mar 11th How to Bring Your Faith ALIVE on a Daily Basis

Why Should I Attend? How well do you understand your Faith? Does your Faith give your life meaning and fulfillment on a daily basis? The truth is that life-changing treasures in the Catholic Church have remained "buried" for many Catholics. So buried, in fact, that the Scriptures, the sacraments, the lives of saints and the teachings of the Church can have little relevance for our daily lives. During the three evenings of the parish mission, Dr. Tom Curran will open your eyes to the treasures available to you in the Catholic Church in a way that is faithful, dynamic and easy to understand. These talks will help your faith COME ALIVE as you encounter the truth and love of God revealed by Christ in the Church. You and your family will benefit for eternity.

Who Should Attend? Those who • Have abandoned the faith • Have been on again, off again • Want to understand your Catholic faith more fully • Want to encounter Jesus more at Mass, in prayer and in your daily life • Are a sinner, a saint, or somewhere in-between…

Dr. Tom Curran is the Director of My Catholic Faith Ministries, a nonprofit ministry dedicated to helping Catholics understand, explore and live out their faith more deeply. Host of the popular radio program and podcast*, Sound Insight, Dr. Curran can be heard at 8am every Mon - Fri, on Sacred Heart Radio, 1050 AM. Dr. Curran is the author of The Mass: Four Encounters With Jesus That Will Change Your Life, Confession: Five Sentences That Will Heal Your Life and Shepherd Me Lord: Daily Reflections for Your Lenten Journey. He holds a Ph.D. in theology from Catholic University in Washington, DC. He lives in Federal Way, WA with his wife, Kari, and their nine children.

Volunteers needed to help hand out retreat materials and help at book table. Interested? Please contact Lilly McGarry at (206) 523-0830 or paa@stbridgetchurch.org.

Vatican Synod Needs Your Input!!The Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and Contemporary World.

The Office of the Synod of Bishops invites a process of broad consultation among every component of the local Church in preparation for the October 2015 synod in Rome. Please take the survey and help the global church.

THANK YOU FROM NAMITEMBO

Dear Friends of Namitembo,

We truly appreciate your generosity this week regarding the second collection for Namitembo disaster relief. To date we have received over $15,000 ! This has been an unprecedented flood, according to online news. Never in the 50 years since independence has there been such severe flooding, loss of life, homes and crops.

If you still wish to donate or would like to ask your friends or family that would be great! All donations can be made to Namitembo School Fund c/o St. Bridget.

Fr. Phillip emailed yesterday that a family near the parish had been washed away by the river. All four died. And that a large tree fell on the Zomba hospital killing two people. The rains continue but are less severe than in January.

He thanks us for our prayers and support!

Destroyed crops and bridge.

Stewardship Renewal

THANK YOU to everyone who has returned a pledge card. We received 355 pledges totaling $708,427

We are still $123,765 short of our goal!

We need YOU to help us reach our goal of $832,000.

Ash Wednesday Homily, Pope Francis - February 18th

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In our continuing catechesis on the family, after having considered the roles of the mother, the father, the children, today we shall reflect on siblings. “Brother” and “sister” are words that Christianity really loves. And, thanks to the family experience, they are words that all cultures and all times comprehend.

The fraternal bond holds a special place in the history of the People of God, who received his revelation at the core of the human experience. The Psalmist sings of the beauty of the fraternal bond: “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Ps 133[132]:1). And this is true, brotherhood is beautiful! Jesus Christ also brought to its fullness this human experience of being brothers and sisters, embracing it in Trinitarian love and thereby empowering it to go well beyond the ties of kinship and enabling it to surmount every barrier of extraneousness.

We know that when the fraternal relationship is destroyed, when the relationship between siblings is destroyed, the road is open to painful experiences of conflict, of betrayal, of hate. The biblical account of Cain and Abel is an example of this negative outcome. After the killing of Abel, God asks Cain: “Where is Abel your brother?” (Gen 4:9a). It is a question that the Lord continues to repeat to every generation. And unfortunately, in every generation, Cain's dramatic answer never fails to be repeated: “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” (ibid., 4:9b). The rupture of the bond between siblings is a nasty, bad thing for humanity. In the family too, how many siblings quarrel over little things, or over an inheritance, and then they no longer speak to each other, they no longer greet one another. This is terrible! Brotherhood is a great thing, when we consider that all our brothers and sisters lived in the womb of the same mother for nine months, came from the mother's flesh! Brotherhood cannot be broken. Let us consider: we all know families that have divided siblings, who have quarrelled; let us ask the Lord — perhaps in our family there are a few cases — to help these families to reunite their siblings, to rebuild the family. Brotherhood must not be broken and when it breaks, what happened to Cain and Abel occurs. When the Lord asks Cain where his brother is, he replies: “I do not know, my brother does not matter to me”. This is terrible, it is a very, very painful thing to hear. In our prayers let us always pray for siblings who are at odds.

Should the bond of fraternity which forms in the family between children arise in an educational atmosphere of openness to others, it is the great school of freedom and peace. In the family, among siblings, human coexistence is learned, how one must live in society. Perhaps we are not always aware of it, but the family itself introduces fraternity into the world! Beginning with this first experience of fraternity, nourished by affection and education at home, the style of fraternity radiates like a promise upon the whole of society and on its relations among peoples.

The blessing that God, in Jesus Christ, pours out on this bond of fraternity, expands in an unimaginable way. He renders it capable of overcoming all differences of nationality, language, culture and even religion. Consider what becomes of the bond between men and women, even when completely different from each other, when they are able to say of another: “He is truly like a brother, she is just like a sister to me!”. This is beautiful! History has shown well enough, after all, that even freedom and equality, without brotherhood, can be full of individualism and conformism, and even personal interests.

Familial fraternity shines in a special way when we see the care, the patience, the affection that envelop the weakest little brother or sister, sick or physically challenged. There are countless brothers and sisters who do this, throughout the world, and perhaps we do not appreciate their generosity enough. And when there are many siblings in a family — today, I greeted a family that has nine children? — the eldest boy or girl helps the dad, the mom, to take care of the younger children. This work of helping among siblings is beautiful.

Having a brother, a sister, who loves you is a deep, precious, irreplaceable experience. Christian fraternity happens in the same way. The smallest, the weakest, the poorest soften us: they have the “right” to take our heart and soul. Yes, they are our brothers and sisters and as such we must love and care for them. When this happens, when the poor are like family members, our own Christian fraternity comes to life again. Christians, in fact, go to meet the poor and the weak not to obey an ideological programme, but because the word and the example of the Lord tell us that we are all brothers and sisters. This is the principle of God's love and of all justice among men. I should like to suggest something: before concluding, just a few words, in silence each of us, let us think of our brothers, our sisters, and from our heart let us pray in silence for them. A moment of silence.

Here then, with this prayer we have brought all, brothers and sisters, with our thoughts, with our hearts, here to the Square to receive the blessing.

Today more than ever it is necessary to place fraternity back at the centre of our technocratic and bureaucratic society: then even freedom and equality will find the correct balance. Therefore, let us not thoughtlessly deprive our families, out of criticism or fear, of the beauty of a bountiful fraternal experience of sons and daughters. And let us not lose our trust in the broad horizon faith is able to draw from this experience, enlightened by God's blessing.